LED arrays are typically formed using LEDs that have a polymer encapsulant formed over an LED die and an associated reflector cup. The LED die itself has a quasi-Lambertian emission pattern and much of the light generated within the LED die is trapped due to total internal reflection at the die surface or emitted from the edge. The polymer encapsulant is shaped to extract more light and to focus the extracted light into a preferred emission profile. The reflector cup captures edge-emitted light and bends it forwards. The array, commonly formed as a tile, may also have side reflectors. The total effect of the reflectors and the encapsulant controls the optical profile of the LED pixel in the array.
Traditionally, the manufacture of a LED array thus includes steps for encapsulating the LED die within an encapsulated package, and then locating and placing the encapsulated package within the array. The optics of the array derive from the package and additional features formed on the array tile. A display, or illumination system, so constructed, consists of point sources of light that knit together visually from a long observation distance. However, the point sources of light break apart visually at shorter distances. Manufacturing is inherently inefficient due to the separate packaging and array population steps and the optics suffer due to the nature of the point source within an extended array. Furthermore, the resulting array tile is relatively thick and bulky.